Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Accumulation

Busying yourself with projects is never easy. Trying to fill these countable hours with things to do is harder than I remember. I read a few books, but find my mind is often distracted after an hour or so. I still have a fairly large back catalog of DVDs to watch, but I seldom find one that I actually want to watch. The same goes for my video games. Even the books, I'm fairly certain I could find a minimum of 100 books in my one bedroom apartment which I've either never started or started and cast aside. I never really developed any other hobbies as it were. There isn't something that I do with people on a regular basis which gives my life meaning and interaction. Beyond this, if I own one CD, I own 600, since in my youth that was my collection du jour. I even collected baseball cards for a while, as my blog roll will attest.

Looking around my apartment, surrounded by my choices, my decisions, my accumulation, it makes me wonder if I lived my life right. Were I a different person, I would have cultivated different interest, moved away from accumulating objects and instead accumulated memories and friendships. I think knowing my life is in such a different phase than everyone else I know makes it harder. Most people I know are locked into security, stability and family, while I drift toward freedom, which is a fairly antithetical way to move freedom as a core value in your life, but I'm finding it is possible.

And there are good days, but even those are empty and somewhat hollow. Being ill at ease with new people and groups of strangers, I can go to an event, sit or stand amidst a sea of humanity I have something in common with, but no connection, enjoy the event and go home. There is a part of me which is alright with this, but the remainder of me wonders if I have set myself up to spend the rest of my days, surrounded only by my accumulated possessions and just building a set of memories, alone, apart from everyone else.

For a long period of my life, I would have assumed it would all shake out that way, but then life changed and I moved in a different direction. But the price of being the caged bird was one I could no longer bear or was able to pay, so I sit here, in my apartment surrounded by my choices, which ended up being an accumulation of items which seldom, if ever, bring me the happiness I always thought they would.